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BinkyBoy's blog

A immigrant trying to straighten out his immigration status with the Department of UberHomeland Security died while in custody of US officials:

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

These are crimes against humanity, human rights are being trampled and the faceless thousands that are trying to get through immigration, legally. We need accountability back in our system, a nonpartisan DOJ would begin that change. So is this another criminalless crime, Mr. Mukasey? No one doing their job with the Federal Government is to be held accountable for their crimes. Maybe they'll just be embarrassed by today's DOJ while another family is devastated. Congratulations, America! read more »

The proposal, which does not require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews that government scientists have been performing for 35 years. Developers welcomed the plan, while environmentalists derided it.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a “back door” to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

Thanks a lot, Dirk. You've once again made Idaho look worse.

I'm pretty sure those two blundering fools have no idea what they have done. What repercussions this will cause will be a matter of time to determine, but I believe they'll be drastic and unfortunate.

The lawsuit (ACSI v. Stearns) was filed in federal court in August of 2005 by the Association of Christian Schools International, Calvary Chapel Christian School, and parents acting on behalf of their children, who were students at Calvary Chapel. They were challenging the University of California's decision to refuse to accept several of their courses as fulfilling UC's admissions requirements. The rejected courses covered the academic spectrum, with English, history, and science classes all failing to meet UC's scrutiny. The common element in the rejected courses was that they did not actually teach the material that UC requires from incoming students. Instead, the rejected courses taught a radically wrong "Christian perspective". read more »

Hampered by years of violence, a decimated infrastructure, a lack of foreign investors and a flood of imports that undercut local businesses, Iraq’s private sector, particularly its small non-oil economy, has so far failed to flourish as its American patrons had hoped.

So what would be the first thing that would come to mind to correct this? Yes, you're right! Pay off more people so that the peace stays that way, at least until November 2nd. read more »

Just a little entertainment, or maybe an example of religious extremism around the world:

Pope Benedict XVI's summer break at a seminary in the mountains of northern Italy has led to demands for the removal of a "provocative" sculpture of a crucified frog on show in a nearby museum. read more »

I read something this evening that I had not heard about anywhere else expect(sic) over at Blackfive’s. He led me over to Mrs. Greyhawk’s wonderful article at the Mudville Gazette that distinguishes the true difference between Sen. Obama - a politician - and Iraq’s Minister of the Interior Jawad Karim al-Bolani - a true Statesman. read more »

Today's Village Idiot rant sounds just like something from the turn of the 20th century:

...makes the point that, since Americanmixed race couples can register as domestic partners and get virtually all the rights and privileges historically reserved for same race married couples, the battle over marriage in America is really about language and whether homosexualsmixed race couples can call a same-sexmixed race union a “marriage.” What the state Supreme Court has done, in legalizing gaymixed race marriage by judicial fiat, is assert a “stunning claim: the right to a noun.” Watson reminds us of the Orwellian nature of this effort to control “the contents of the Oxford English Dictionary” by changing the definition of marriage from what has been throughout all recorded human history. Orwell recognized that the “political manipulation of language is essential to the full range of thought control,” and, if homosexualmixed race activists are successful generations of Americans to come will have no concept of marriage as it has been since the dawn of creation. The legal entanglements that are sure to follow – as both California and Massachusetts turn into a bi-coastal Las Vegas of homosexualmixed race marriage – surely dictate the necessity of a federal marriage amendment. As Lincoln said of the pressing moral issue of his day, “[T]his government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” It should be pointed out that, contrary to Sen. McCain’s position, a federal marriage amendment shows the ultimate respect for states’ rights because it cannot go into effect until 37 states ratify it.

There, now it is appropriate to the time that the Village Idiot thinks we're living in. read more »

For all the right wing morons that were just absolutely positive that Obama wouldn't go visit the wounded soldiers in Germany:

The Washington Post -- McCain's charge that Obama snubbed troops "lacks evidence:" "For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital (in Germany) because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true. ... A reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding Obama's decision not to visit Landstuhl, based on firsthand reporting from the trip, shows that his campaign never contemplated taking the media with him." McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds told the Post that the campaign sticks by its allegation, citing media reports as its evidence. "Asked repeatedly for the 'reports,' Bounds provided three examples, none of which alleged that Obama had wanted to take members of the media to the hospital."

You were wrong again. Surprise! Maybe if you'd do some fact checking before believing stories that you want to be true, you wouldn't get caught so often.

What do you get when you put too much stupid in one place? Adam's Blog.

I guess when you just don't think that your readers will survive without the appropriate amount of crazy and stupid you bring in the backup, a constipated conspiracy theorist that can't stop giggling and a walrus. read more »

Anybody who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver. In fact, the person who maintains absolute standards of good and evil usually is the maniac with the revolver.

Pregnant unwed mothers, adulterers and any other "sinners" need to be leaving Texas as quickly as possible:

Laura Schubert Pearson's lawsuit accusing members of the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church of subjecting her to a two-day exorcism ordeal in 1996 that left her so distressed she attempted suicide was dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court last month.

The judges overturned a lower court's decision awarding her damages and ruled that because Mrs Schubert Pearson's claims of injury amounted to a religious dispute over church doctrine it would be "unconstitutional" for the court to get involved.

Yep, they can subject her to trauma, both physical and mental, against her will and then get off scott-free because of "religion". Whats to stop this same court from claiming a stoning of a child for backtalk is also a religious expression and protected as a right?

President Bush praised Pakistan’s commitment to fighting the Taliban and other extremists along its deteriorating border with Afghanistan on Monday, only hours after an American missile strike destroyed a militant outpost in that region, killing six, according to administration and Pakistani officials. read more »

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

I'd also like to know when all of those hired by Gonzo's DOJ will be reviewed and released? Hopefully as soon as possible, but somehow I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

When Barack Obama rightly suggested that the United States would have talks with Iran when he becomes President, many of the right wing tards berated him.

Well, now that their little Emperor is having multilateral talks with Iran, whats the word?

On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”

Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.

Obama is already leading the nation, with close to 5 months still to go before the next President takes office. The man has shown the clearest leadership of a Presidential candidate, forcing a lame duck to do multiple about-face turns in order to make a token gesture of party assistance. McCain still lumbers behind, his walker caught on the ivy and rose bushes in his backyard, unable to yell at the kids on his lawn.

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow. read more »